Chapter 17 #2
His lips move under mine, eager and sloppy, and when I squeeze my hand just a little tighter on his throat, he lets out a soft, wrecked sound that goes straight to my dick. He breaks the kiss only when I let him breathe, panting, eyes blown.
“Hey, Daddy,” he breathes, and any leftover irritation I had about anything evaporates in an instant.
The hit at practice, the ache in my ribs, the stupid annoyance at him not waiting outside the stadium; all of it burns up in the heat that flares low in my gut at that greeting.
I huff out a laugh against his mouth, press my forehead to his, and feel his breath fan over my lips.
“Hey, Little Sin,” I murmur. “Couldn’t stay away, huh?”
He blushes, but there’s no denial in his eyes. “You told me to show up when you say,” he mutters. “You didn’t say I couldn’t be early.”
“Technicality,” I say, amused. “You’re lucky I like your enthusiasm.”
He rolls his eyes, which is brave with my hand still around his throat. “You like anything that feeds your ego.”
“True,” I say. “But I like this more.”
I give his neck a final squeeze, then let go, stepping back just enough to grab the strap of his bag from the ground.
“Come on. If my neighbors drive by and see you making out with me against this car, I’m going to have to kill more people than I planned this week.”
He splutters. “You don’t have neighbors,” he says, following me toward the door anyway.
“Exactly,” I toss over my shoulder. “Let’s keep it that way.”
His shoulders loosen as soon as the door closes behind us, the familiar creak of the hinges and the soft thud of wood against frame sealing us into our own little world again.
There’s a weird thing that happens when he’s here; the cottage feels less like a crime scene and more like a place actual humans could live.
The air doesn’t change; the layout doesn’t either.
There are probably still trace amounts of bleach and blood in the cracks of the floorboards, no matter how well I clean.
But with him in the space, dropping his bag by the table and pulling out his laptop, the whole place shifts from den to den slash study. I never planned on that upgrade.
“Did you eat?” I ask because apparently, this is who I am now.
He blinks. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “I grabbed a sandwich on campus between classes.”
I narrow my eyes. “Actual sandwich, or something sad from a vending machine.”
He squirms a little, which answers that. “It had bread,” he mutters.
“Pathetic,” I say, but there’s no bite in it. “Sit. I’m heating something up.”
He obeys without arguing, which tells me everything I need to know about how fried he still is from last night and this morning. He drops into his usual chair at the dining table, setting up his materials with automatic precision, while I pull my meal prep from the freezer and toss it into a pan.
The sizzle fills the silence between us, grounding and domestic in a way that feels obscene for someone like me. He watches me from under his lashes while pretending to review his notes, his eyes tracking the way I move around my own kitchen.
We eat. I shovel food in, because practice always leaves me starving, and he nibbles more politely, but gets through enough that I’m satisfied he isn’t running on coffee fumes alone.
The more he eats, the more color comes back into his face. By the time we’re at the table with our laptops and his stack of cases, he looks almost normal. He slips into teacher mode fast, which is one of the reasons I let this whole setup get as far as it has.
“Okay,” he says, tapping his pen against a printed case. “Walk me through the holding in this one, in your own words. And this time, don’t just say ‘the Court said fuck you’ and call it a day.”
God, he’s feeling comfortable enough to say fuck without a blush or stutter.
“The Court did say fuck you,” I point out. “Just with more Latin.”
“Then translate the Latin,” he says, arching a brow. “Come on. Head in the game, Beast.”
The nickname in that context makes me fucking pleased. I lean back, lace my fingers behind my head, and start talking through the case, stripping the legalese down to the bones.
It goes like that for a while—back and forth, him pushing, me answering—until we hit one of the more tedious administrative decisions and I lose patience with the way the court framed its reasoning.
I mutter under my breath, the disgust slipping out in the language I learned at my mother’s knee before I can stop it.
The pen in his hand goes still. “You… speak Russian,” he says, sounding weirdly delighted and thrown at the same time.
I look up, caught. “Yeah. I thought my last name gave it away.”
He blinks, leaning forward slightly. “You never… you’ve never slipped like that before,” he says. “Not around me.”
“I try not to,” I say. “Old habit. When I’m pissed, or tired, or bored, it’s where my head goes. You already have enough dirt on me without hearing me swear in more than one language.”
“It’s… pretty,” he says, surprising me.
I snort. “Still sounds like knives and glass to me.”
“That explains why I couldn’t find any of those curses on Duolingo,” he mutters, then flushes when he realizes he admitted that out loud.
“Oh my God,” I say, laughing. “You tried to learn Russian on an app.”
“Shut up, I was curious a couple years ago,” he says defensively, rolling his eyes, but there’s also warmth there now—a new thread of connection I didn’t have to force.
After an hour or so, he leans back, stretches his arms over his head with a tiny groan as his spine pops. His sweater rides up a little to show a strip of skin above his waistband. My brain short-circuits, and decides we’re done studying.
I close my laptop, lean back in my chair, and let my gaze sweep over him. “Come here,” I say.
He looks up, blinking. “We’re not done,” he says automatically. “We still need to go over—”
“I said come here, Little Sin,” I repeat, patting my thigh.
A blush creeps up his neck. “Dom…”
My voice drops. “Brendon.”
He swallows, eyes flicking down like he can’t not look where I’m indicating. “We’re supposed to be working,” he says, but it’s half-hearted, more habit than refusal.
“We are working,” I say. “On your obedience and my impulse control. Win-win.”
His lips twitch like he wants to argue and call me on how bullshit that is, but the part of him that listens when I use that tone is awake and stretching. He pushes his chair back slowly, stands, and walks around the table.
“Sit,” I say, patting my thigh when he stops in front of me.
He takes a breath, then lowers himself carefully, still not used to the size difference, or the way we fit. I put my hands on his hips and guide him, turning him from a careful sideways perch into a full straddle.
His knees are on either side of mine, chest to chest, his weight settling over me in a way that feels too fucking good. He gasps when he realizes how close we are, hands flying to my shoulders and fingers digging in.
“Dom,” he mutters again, voice already thinner.
“Hi,” I say, smirking. “Welcome to office hours.”
“You’re…” He swallows. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You came here two hours early,” I remind him, letting my hands slide up his sides, palms flat against his ribs, feeling the flutter of his breathing. “You watched me at practice.”
He shifts, embarrassed. “There were other people there. It’s not like I was holding a sign.”
“You may as well have been,” I say. “You know what seeing you next to all those idiots did to me?”
“Distracted you so much you almost got killed?” he offers, a flicker of brat sparking in his eyes.
I grin, teeth flashing. “You love that you rattled me. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
He opens his mouth, then shuts it again, because we both know I’m right. I let one hand drift up to the back of his neck, fingers threading into the short hairs there, thumb tracing lazily along the line of his spine.
“What were you thinking up there?” I ask. “When you saw me in my element?”
He shifts on my lap, the movement unintentional and dangerous, and drags in a breath. I feel every fucking inch of it.
The little friction of him settling, the quick way his body goes still right after like he knows exactly what he just did. The blush that started at his neck has made it all the way up his cheeks now, painting him in this pretty, unwilling pink that makes him look almost soft enough to bite.
“Nothing,” he lies.
I laugh low in my throat and tighten my grip hard enough to make his breath hitch. “You’re a terrible liar, Little Sin. Try again.”
He looks away for half a second, then forces himself to meet my eyes, and there it is again—that furious little spark I fucking love, the one that shows up when I push him into honesty and he hates how easily it comes out around me.
“I was thinking,” he says carefully, “that the girls in the stands needed hobbies. One of them said she’d let you ruin her life, which is dramatic and stupid, and another one kept talking about your tank top like she wanted to peel it off with her teeth.”
I grin so hard it almost hurts. “Yeah?”
His jaw tightens. “Don’t make that face.”
“What face?” I ask innocently.
“That smug one,” he says immediately. “The one you get when you know you’re being unbearable.”
“I’m unbearable all the time,” I point out. “You’re going to have to narrow it down.”
He glares, but there’s no real heat in it because I can see the pulse jumping in his throat and the way his knees hug my hips a little tighter without him meaning to. He’s worked up, not just embarrassed. Possessive. Jealous. My shy little Christian boy watched me on the field and got territorial.
I slide my hand from the back of his neck to his jaw, thumb brushing once over the flush in his cheek. “Tell me what you were thinking when they were looking at me.”
“That they should stop, because you’re mine,” he blurts, then immediately looks like he wants to sink into the floor. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean—I know you’re not—”